


Lasting Impressions

by Code_The_Poet



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Banter, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Futaba POV, Gen, PTSD, Past Abuse, Sojiro and Ren are also here but barely, the tags sound scary but it's mostly Futaba being a good friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:21:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26275579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Code_The_Poet/pseuds/Code_The_Poet
Summary: The worst memories have a tendency to leave the strongest impressions. Futaba knows this firsthand, but this is the first time she's seen it happen to someone else.Or, a particular scene in an anime reminds Yusuke of his time in the atelier and Futaba does her best to comfort him and cheer him up.
Relationships: Kitagawa Yusuke & Sakura Futaba
Comments: 7
Kudos: 71





	Lasting Impressions

**Author's Note:**

> TW: This contains a relatively detailed description of a flashback from an outside perspective. (The past abuse is only mentioned in vague terms though.)

As the familiar opening chords of the ending theme blasted through the computer speakers, Futaba couldn’t stop herself from humming along. She finished typing her line of code and spun her computer chair around to face her bed.

“That episode was pretty top-tier, don’t you think Inari?” she asked the boy sitting on the bed.

Yusuke didn’t look up from scribbling furiously in his sketchbook, but he made a noise of agreement. “The animation quality during the battle scene was simply excellent. I was particularly impressed by the way the flashback sequences were used to build up to the final strike.”

Futaba cackled gleefully. “If you thought that was impressive, just wait until you see the season finale. We only have, hm—” She spun around to check the episode list that was pulled up on one of her computer monitors before whirling back to face the bed again. “—five episodes. Think we can finish it before you have to be back at the dorms?”

“Certainly,” he replied without hesitation, but almost immediately he frowned. “Er, what time is it again?”

Spin, computer. Spin, bed. “Almost five o’clock.”

Yusuke finally looked up from his sketchbook, one eyebrow cocked in an amused expression. “Really, Futaba, you are going to make yourself sick if you keep spinning like that.”

“But it’s funnnn, Inari,” she whined, and spun the chair around again just to spite him.

He sighed disapprovingly, but didn’t take the bait. Instead he set down his sketchbook and stretched, rolling his neck to ease the tension that Futaba guessed came from long hours of drawing. “I suppose I have the time to see this endeavour through to the end. Otherwise, I would likely never hear the end of it from you.”

“You know me too well, Inari.” Futaba leaned over to rummage around in her snack drawer. “Here, catch!”

Yusuke’s quick battle reflexes did not disappoint, and he caught the package of his favourite snack sticks easily. “On the contrary, I believe it is you who knows me too well.”

She waved off the comment in her usual nonchalant way. “Yeah yeah, we all know your loyalty can be bought with free food.” Tearing open her packet of sweet chili flavoured seaweed crisps, she paused a moment to cram some in her mouth. “Now, pay attention. This is the episode where they go to train with the mysterious hermit in the forest.”

“The one alluded to in episodes 7 and 13?”

Futaba couldn’t help but grin at the artist’s impressive memory for details, second only to her own. “The very same.”

“I look forward to it, then. One moment, please.”

She waited patiently as Yusuke rummaged through the scattered art supplies on the bed beside him until he appeared to find a pencil that he was satisfied with. (Futaba was of the opinion that all of the pencils looked pretty much identical, but she had learned the hard way not to point this out or she would be subjected to yet another long-winded explanation about the graphite grading scale.)

“Ready?” she asked finally, unable to contain her excitement any further.

“Ready,” he confirmed, lifting his sketchbook once more.

“Mission start!” Futaba hit play with a flourish and sunk back in her chair with her food, grinning to herself. It wasn’t every day that she was able to convince one of her friends to marathon an entire season of anime in one sitting, which was the optimal way to experience it as far as she was concerned, so she was going to enjoy it while she could.

The episode was actually rather subpar, despite all the hype of the mysterious hermit, and for the first while the room was quiet aside from the rustling of snack packages and the scratching of Yusuke’s pencil on the page of his sketchbook. Anyone else might have questioned how he could both draw and pay enough attention to catch all the details he would later recall, but Futaba was in the habit of coding entire projects during her lengthy (and frequent) anime marathons so she didn’t even think twice about it.

Once the hermit was introduced the pace picked up considerably, but Futaba was a little shocked that his teaching methods were a little more ruthless than she remembered. She frowned as she watched him berate one of the protagonists for a mistake that hadn’t been very obvious.

“I know this guy’s supposed to be a master fighter and all, but he’s still being kind of a jerk,” she commented in an attempt to break the tense silence. “He’d be a good candidate for a change of heart, don’t you think?”

There was no answer, and Futaba noticed for the first time that the noise of the pencil had stopped. She frowned, but didn’t look away from the flickering images on the screen just yet. “Inari? You still there?”

Silence. Now she was definitely uneasy. Tearing her eyes away from the screen, she spun around to face the bed.

What little colour there was had drained out of Yusuke’s already pale face, leaving him impossibly white. His sketchbook lay forgotten on the bed beside him, and he stared past her at the computer screen, making no indication that he had heard her. Another shout came from the voice Futaba recognized as belonging to the hermit, and she was startled to see Yusuke cringe visibly.

Swearing under her breath, she turned back and fumbled slightly in her race to pause the episode. As an afterthought, she shut off that particular monitor as well, causing the image onscreen to dissolve into inky blackness.

Another look at Yusuke confirmed that he hadn’t moved. Futaba was starting to feel a faint hint of panic rising in her chest, and in desperation she cried out, “Yusuke!”

The boy on the bed flinched. “No,” he whispered, and something about his voice sounded choked and wrong. “No, please.” He brought up his arms and wrapped them protectively around himself, and Futaba noticed for the first time that he was shaking.

The pale face, the strangled voice, the uncontrollable shivering… It was all too familiar to Futaba, who had spent too many lonely nights huddled in this very room experiencing what she now recognized as some kind of flashback. She shook off the paralyzing effect of her own fear and hopped to her feet, slowly approaching her friend. Yusuke made no move to stop her, but the chorus of “no’s” began to fade as she got closer.

“Inari, it’s me, Futaba,” she said, trying desperately to keep her own voice steady and calm. “Can you hear me?”

A pause, then a barely perceptible nod.

“Okay. Good.” Futaba wracked her brain frantically, trying to remember what Sojiro had done to ease her discomfort when he was around to do so. Talked to her, reassured her, held her through the worst of it… She definitely wasn’t about to do that last one (not to mention Yusuke wasn’t really a fan of physical contact anyways) so she resigned herself to the first two options.

“I’m guessing you can’t really answer me right now, huh?” she asked, settling on the bed beside him in her usual crouched posture.

Another nod, this time accompanied by a shaky exhale.

“That’s fine. Just keep listening, ’kay?”

He nodded a third time, and Futaba began murmuring a string of what she hoped were reassuring words. It was surprisingly easy to keep up, and after a while she noticed that Yusuke’s tense posture was starting to relax.

“How do you feel now?” she asked in a pause.

Yusuke didn’t answer right away. “Cold,” he whispered finally.

It wasn’t the response Futaba expected, as Yusuke typically seemed to have an almost inhuman resistance to cold, but she wasted no time in tracking down her most comfortable blanket (adorned with her favourite ranger from Phoenix Ranger Featherman R, of course) and draping it over his shoulders. He shot her a grateful look as he pulled it around the rest of his body.

“I—” The attempt at communication was cut off by a sob that shuddered through his whole body, and Yusuke immediately ducked his head in shame. “My apologies, Futaba, I—I didn’t—”

“S’okay, Inari,” she said softly, looking down at her hands as she nervously twisted them together, no longer sure what to do. She had cried many times after her own episodes, but to hear it from the boy who could take a Shadow’s powerful attack without so much as a yelp was a bit disconcerting.

The silence stretched between them, punctuated only by Yusuke’s quiet sobs. Futaba stayed perched beside him, hugging her knees to her chest, hoping that her presence was at least a little more helpful than she currently felt. Everything she could think of saying sounded hollow and corny in her head, and she desperately wished Ren were here instead. He always seemed to know what to do in situations like these.

At last, Yusuke’s breathing evened out and he dried his eyes with a final swipe of his sleeve. “That was rather unpleasant,” he managed, and Futaba was relieved to hear that a hint of his usual dry humour had returned to his voice.

“Has this happened before?” she ventured timidly.

He heaved a shaky sigh. “Yes and no. It happens from time to time, but it is not usually this intense.”

“Do you know what caused it?” she asked, before quickly adding, “If you don’t mind me asking, that is.”

“Ah.” Yusuke drew the blanket a little tighter around himself, as if to reassure himself that he was still here in her room. “It is a little embarrassing to admit it, but upon hearing such a… pitiful attempt at teaching, I believed for a minute that I was back in the atelier.”

Futaba was pretty sure she knew what he meant, but just to be sure she asked, “Your former sensei’s place, you mean?”

The grimace on Yusuke’s face told her all she needed to know. “It’s been months since I left that place and still I cannot help but hear his voice in the strangest of places,” he confessed, sounding miserable. “Why do I allow him to continue to affect me in this way?”

Futaba shook her head. “It’s not your fault,” she insisted. “Stuff like that leaves lasting impressions.”

“But it is my fault!” Yusuke burst out in frustration. “Am I really so weak as to lose my composure over something so trivial?”

Futaba could feel her own irritation building, and she retorted without thinking. “Was I weak, then?”

The sudden fierceness in her voice caused Yusuke to stare at her in shock. “Huh?”

She waved her hand at him. “You’ve seen the same thing happen to me. I had an entire freaking palace because of this stuff! Do you think I’m weak?”

“No, of course not,” he answered, stubborn as always. “You were dealing with circumstances far beyond your means.”

“And you’re _not?_ ” she asked, adjusting her glasses and fixing him with a piercing glare. “Trauma is trauma, Inari, no matter how much you try to pass it off as anything else!”

Yusuke looked away. “Oh,” he said in a small voice.

Something about the way he said it made Futaba feel worse than if he’d continued to argue with her. “Hey,” she said, trying to sound apologetic. “I didn’t mean to get all fired up like that. I just can’t stand to hear you talking the way I used to talk about myself.”

“It is alright.” There was a calmness to Yusuke’s voice that had previously been lacking. “Perhaps you are right after all, Futaba. It is entirely possible that I have some sort of lasting trauma from my experiences as his student.”

 _Duh, we all knew that!_ Futaba wanted to shout, but she restrained herself. Instead, she got to her feet and padded over to the minifridge in the corner, pulling out two bottles of Muscle-Ade. She returned to her computer chair and shoved one of them at Yusuke. “Drink,” she ordered, trying not to cringe at how much she reminded herself of Sojiro. “Crying dehydrates you. Expelling fluids from your tear ducts and all.”

He made an effort to grin at her before cracking open the bottle and draining half of it in a single sip. “Thank you.”

The sincerity of his remark caught her off guard, and she could only mumble something about being careful not to spill on her blanket in response. Mercifully, her phone buzzed soon after and she busied herself with the text from Sojiro.

_> Closing up soon. Will you and that artist kid need something to eat, assuming he’s still there?_

She didn’t even bother to ask Yusuke before sending her reply.

_> yes plz_

_> we demand curry_

_> and u know his name is yusuke so stop pretending u don’t_

Satisfied, she slipped her phone back into her pocket. “Sojiro’s gonna bring us curry,” she announced, spinning back around to face her computer. “And no arguing because I know you haven’t eaten anything other than the snacks I’ve been force-feeding you all day.”

In the reflection of one of her inactive monitors she saw Yusuke, who had been about to object, slump back in defeat. “That man is too good to me,” he grumbled, but the complaint was obviously half-hearted.

“He cares about you. We all do. Now shut up and accept it.” Now that she was at her computer, furiously typing up a long-winded rebuttal to an idiotic theory on the Featherman forums, Futaba was finding it much easier to express herself. “Oh, and don’t think I’m letting you go back to the dorms alone tonight.”

“Now that is a bit excessive,” protested Yusuke. “I assure you that I’m perfectly fine. Besides, doesn’t Sojiro have a rule against boys sleeping over?”

Futaba smirked to herself. “Doesn’t matter. Ren doesn’t have that rule.”

“Absolutely not,” Yusuke said immediately. “Ren has already offered me a place to stay in the past and I refuse to impose on him any more than necessary.”

She hit the post button on her completed post and spun around to face him. “I’m pretty sure if I told Ren what just happened he would agree that this is completely necessary and drag you over there himself.”

Yusuke paled slightly. “You haven’t told him, have you?”

Futaba debated on whether she wanted to let him squirm a little longer, but decided that would be unnecessarily cruel. “Not yet,” she confirmed. “I’ll leave that up to you. That is, unless you were planning on hiding this from our fearless leader, who might be the only person in the world who cares about you more than me?” She stared him down with as much intensity as she could muster, and Yusuke broke eye contact almost immediately to stare down at the now-empty bottle he held.

“Of course not,” he said quietly, turning the bottle around in his hands. “I was just… scared, to tell the truth. I thought that if I ignored it long enough it would go away on its own.”

Futaba snorted. “Yeah, and then you’d end up a shut-in like me. Great idea, Inari.” She made no effort to keep the biting sarcasm out of her voice.

“Although,” continued Yusuke as if he hadn’t heard her, “it would not surprise me if Ren suspects something along these lines. He has already urged me to see a therapist on multiple occasions.”

Futaba was about to agree, but she was interrupted by a knock on the door. “It’s open!” she called, too lazy to get out of her chair, and the door opened to reveal Sojiro with two containers of still-warm curry.

“Delivery for Ms. Futaba Sakura,” he droned with his usual deadpan sense of humour, and Futaba rolled her eyes.

“Daaad, that’s so lame,” she complained, even as she accepted the container of curry he handed to her.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said, but from the conspiratorial wink he shot Yusuke it was obvious he wasn’t sorry at all. “Any idea when Ren will be home? I left some dishes in the sink for him.”

“Prob’ly late. He’s out at… work,” Futaba replied around a mouthful of curry, electing not to share that “work” involved serving at a bar in Shinjuku. She had a feeling that Sojiro didn’t know about this particular job of Ren’s and she certainly wasn’t going to be the one to tell him.

Sojiro sighed. “That kid works too much. I wonder what he does with all the money he earns…”

“Nothing!” said Futaba, too quickly. “Uh, I mean he definitely doesn’t use it to buy me expensive Featherman figurines, so it must be nothing important.” She hoped the heat on her cheeks was easily passed off as a side-effect of the curry she was currently inhaling. “Anyways,” she continued, eager to change the subject. “Inari here was wondering if he could spend the night at Leblanc. Poor guy’s trying to save money on train fares again because he still hasn’t learned to budget.” Yusuke glared at her from behind Sojiro’s back, his mouth too full of curry to correct her, and she stuck her tongue out at him in return.

Sojiro stroked his goatee thoughtfully. “I don’t see why not. Ren’s on board with this?”

Yusuke swallowed his mouthful of curry with what appeared to be a great effort and opened his mouth to disagree, but Futaba cut him off before he could even get in a word. “Absolutely.” Which wasn’t _technically_ a lie because she was 98% sure Ren would be completely on board even before finding out what had happened. (The extra 2% was the possibility that he would be too scared of Morgana’s strict bedtime rules, but she figured she could kidnap the stubborn feline and hold him hostage here if that was the case.)

“In that case, I have no objections. Say hello to Ren for me.” This last part was directed at Yusuke, who could only nod in defeat as Sojiro turned to leave. “Well, you kids enjoy the rest of your evening.”

“Thank you Sojiro!” sang Futaba in a sing-song voice, and only once he’d disappeared down the stairs did she turn to flash a victorious grin at Yusuke.

“You lie with astonishing ease,” observed the artist, sounding as if he couldn’t decide whether to reprimand or congratulate her. “Which I suppose is a good thing, since you also seem to dig yourself into holes at a rather alarming rate. ‘Expensive Featherman figurines’ indeed.”

“Oh shut up and finish your curry.” Futaba added her now-empty curry container to the stack of similar dishes beside her desk and turned around to slump in front of her keyboard. She was starting to feel drained from so much social interaction, especially since it was the sort that required her to be actually sincere for once. Pulling out her phone, she sent a quick succession of texts to Ren.

_> r u on ur way home yet?_

_> bc inari’s staying with u tonight and i’m tired_

_> btw Sojiro already said it was ok so u can’t say no_

To her surprise, the answer came right away.

_> …I’m not even going to ask. Tell him yeah that’s fine._

_> Morgana says he’d better not keep me up late though._

_> And yeah, I’ll be home soon._

“Ren’s on his way,” she announced, making no effort to keep the sleepiness out of her voice. “You should probably pack up your 57 pencils or whatever it is you always leave spread all over my bed.”

“I have 36 pencils, not 57,” Yusuke corrected her.

“Yeah, whatevs.” Futaba waved a hand dismissively. “As long as I don’t end up stabbing myself on one of them later tonight.”

There was a brief silence broken only by the clinking sounds of Yusuke packing up the aforementioned pencils. Futaba was dangerously close to drifting off right where she sat when the boy behind her cleared his throat.

“Er, Futaba?”

“Mhm?”

“I simply wish to thank you.” Yusuke sounded embarrassed, but he pressed on. “You have alerted me to the existence of something that I took for granted, and though I did not express it very eloquently at the time I am exceedingly grateful for the kindness you showed me tonight.”

She lifted herself off the desk with a groan. “God, Inari, do you always have to sound like you’re trying to meet some kind of word count when you talk?” Spinning around to face the bed, however, she revealed a shy smile on her face. “Look, I just don’t want you to suffer like I did. Go talk to Ren and see a therapist or whatever you need to do to figure this out, and let us help you whenever we can, got it?”

Yusuke finished cramming the rest of his art supplies into his overstuffed schoolbag before looking up and returning the smile. “I promise,” he replied solemnly.

“Good,” said Futaba, her tone brisk again. “Besides, you know I’ve bugged Leblanc so I’ll know if you chicken out on telling Ren.”

“Futaba!” Yusuke accused. “I thought Boss ordered you to remove those!”

“And I will,” she countered, “when all this is over. Can’t have anyone sneaking in and trying to off the leader of the Phantom Thieves without any of us knowing, can we?”

“I suppose,” he conceded grudgingly. “Still, it is rather impolite to listen in on private conversations.”

A _ding!_ from Yusuke’s phone saved her from having to defend herself, and he fumbled to pull it out of his pocket.

“Ah, Ren is waiting to walk me to Leblanc. I suppose I should be going now.”

“Okaybye,” Futaba said, not caring that her words were beginning to slur together from tiredness. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

As the door closed behind him, she rolled her chair over to her bed and flopped face down on top of the covers, wrinkling her nose at the lingering smell of paint and other art things that seemed to follow Yusuke wherever he went. Her metaphorical batteries were nearly depleted, and she was in the middle of calculating how long she would have to sleep to recharge them when her phone buzzed with a text from Ren.

_> Yusuke just told me what happened._

_> He also told me you haven’t debugged Leblanc yet, which if that’s true, get your snooping ears out of my bedroom this instant._

_> But seriously, thanks for looking after him. I’ve been telling him to go see a therapist for months and he finally agreed._

“Another victory for Oracle!” crowed Futaba, pumping her fist weakly in the air. She used the rest of her strength to send a thumbs-up emoji to Ren, and fell asleep with her phone in her hand and a smile on her lips.

**Author's Note:**

> And then Futaba slept for 36 hours to recover.


End file.
